important plant areas in central and eastern europe - Plantlife

Section 1
important areas for plants by 2010. National IPA projects can assist governments to
meet this target.
IPAs are also closely linked with the conservation aims of the Pan-European Biological
and Landscape Diversity Strategy (PEBLDS), the Pan-European Ecological Network
(PEEN), the Bern Convention and the Emerald Network, the EU Biodiversity Strategy,
the EU Habitats Directive and the Natura 2000 network, the EU Water Framework
Directive, the Aarhus Convention on public participation in environmental decisionmaking,
the RAMSAR Convention on Wetlands, and conservation monitoring projects
such as the IEBI 2010. Detailed information on how IPAs link to these programmes can
be found in Section 7.
Countries involved in this project
At the end of 2001 the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality of the
Netherlands provided funds to identify IPAs in seven countries in central and eastern
Europe.These countries are Belarus (with project development in Russia and the CIS
region), the Czech Republic, Estonia, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. In this
publication these seven countries are referred to as the partner countries.
Plantlife International carries out the role of IPA Secretariat providing technical
information, database facilities, coordination and administration. In each of the seven
countries there is a coordinating organisation and a national team made up of many
different individuals and organisations, which carries out the identification of IPAs.
Details of the national coordinators and teams can be found in Section 5.
There are also other IPA projects in Europe and in other regions of the world.Turkey
was the first country to complete IPA identification and publish its results. IPA
identification projects funded through the Regional Environmental Centre and
environment ministries have begun in south eastern Europe including Bulgaria, Croatia,
FYR of Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro. The World Conservation Union, IUCN-CIS,
in Moscow is developing IPA project proposals for Russia and regions of eastern Europe.
Other countries in Europe have either begun IPA projects or are interested in
developing them, including Finland, Hungary, Lithuania, Spain, Ukraine, the United
Kingdom, and Mediterranean countries including Morocco and the Lebanon. Other
regions of the world such as southern Africa, south east Asia, and New Zealand are also
developing IPA projects and details of all these projects and the various European
projects can be found in Section 5.
Methodology for identifying IPAs
The basic principles of IPA identification are based on the presence of one or more of
the following criteria:
Criterion A
Criterion B
Criterion C
Threatened Species
Botanical Richness
Threatened Habitats
These criteria were first debated in the first Planta Europa Conference in France in
1992 and have been developed and refined through a process of workshops and written
consultations involving a wide range of specialists from different countries. (A more
detailed explanation is given in Section 2)
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